Gallaudet's Silent Treatment

Dan Graves, MSL

Church History Timeline

Gallaudet was a missionary with a difference. His work was not in
steamy jungles or among primitive tribesmen. He did not sail the seas to
reach it. His souls were not immigrants or gangsters. No, Thomas
Gallaudet's subjects were silent people.

Like his father before him, he was concerned with the problems of the
deaf. The older Gallaudet had founded a school for deaf mutes and
married a deaf-mute named Sophia (Thomas's mother). In his turn, Thomas
married a deaf mute, too--Elizabeth Budd, one of his college students.
Clearly God was preparing him for his special ministry.

In 1850, he found a treatment: he started a deaf class in St.
Stephens Church in New York which quickly outgrew its space. The next
year, he was ordained as an Episcopal priest. The death of a deaf
student from tuberculosis convinced him that more had to be done for the
spiritual needs of those who cannot hear. With help from his
denomination, he set out to improve his treatment by establishing a
church for the deaf. On this day, October 3,
1852, he held the world's first church service for the deaf in
the little Washington Square chapel of New York University.

Seven years later, his congregation bought a church building and
rectory. The St. Ann's Church for the Deaf was a world's first. Under
Gallaudet's leadership, St. Ann's undertook mission work for the
deaf.

Thomas Gallaudet's deep spirituality can be seen not only in his
concern for those who cannot hear, but in this verse from a lovely hymn
he wrote.

Jesus, in sickness and in pain, Be near to succor me, My
sinking spirit still sustain; To Thee I turn, to Thee.

Bibliography:

Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.